Vietnam's football team concludes 2016 as world no. 134

The Vietnamese men’s national football team dropped five notches to 134th position in the latest world rankings released on December 22, the last rankings published by the International Football Federation (FIFA) for 2016.

The Vietnamese men's national football team.

With a total of 218 points, 17 points fewer than the previous month, the Vietnamese squad ended up in 21st place in Asia and came third in Southeast Asia.

Despite failing to progress through to the group stage of the recent 2016 AFF Suzuki Cup and slipping three steps compared to November, the Philippines still led the ASEAN region with 273 points as world no. 120. Thailand followed in second place after moving up three notches to 126th place in the world.

Notably, defending AFF Suzuki Cup runners-up Indonesia produced an impressive eight-place leap to sit 171st in the FIFA ranking with 120 points.

Iran maintained its reign atop the Asian ladders at 814 points (world no. 29), followed by the Republic of Korea (world no. 37), Japan (world no. 45) and Australia (world no. 47).

There was little change in the world’s top ten as Argentina defended top spot with 1,634 points, ahead of Brazil with 1,544 and Germany with 1,433 points. Other top-ten teams included Chile, Belgium, Colombia, France, Portugal, Uruguay and Spain.

(Source: NDO)